Memories Never Fade
by JEDIJESSICUH
Summary: After the war is over the students are allowed back into Hogwarts to get their belongings. Draco stumbles across a box of memories from the past few months with Ginny and can't forget what he knows she'll never remember.


**Disclaimer**: I do not own Harry Potter or the Draco and Ginny fanship. If I did, they would have an awesome pirate flag - the ship, not the series.

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><p>Draco walked around the scattered ashes that used to be his seventh year dormitory. If he closed his eyes real tight, he could still see Blaise's bed sitting across from his in the corner. Now all that was left were decimated sheets, bed posts ripped from their home and trunks spewing their insides all across the floor. It had only been a week since the final battle, but no one had been in to clean anything up. At first, he thought the Slytherin common room wouldn't have been hit that badly, but there were telltale signs of war everywhere. If Draco looked closely, and he chose not to, he would have noticed the spatters of blood on what used to be Theodore Nott's pillow. He was not here to see what remained after the war though, he didn't particularly care. The only reason he'd shown up was to see if his family heirloom remained among the rubble.<p>

It had taken the staff more than three days to walk through all of Hogwarts, securing walls and roofs so students could return. The school would need more repairs than had been done, but McGonagall thought there would be students who might want to retrieve a thing or two. When Draco had heard he would be allowed back in, he showed up before the gates were even scheduled to open. Now, as he found his trunk displaced twenty feet from its original spot, he sat before the objects falling out and sorted through them.

Essays assigned by the Carrows, notes from his now deceased godfather and a cloak later he found a dusty old shoebox. Draco vaguely remembered when he had obtained it, but his memory was impeccable when he thought about what was inside. Carefully he took off the lid, dented in the middle but otherwise unscathed. A familiar scent hit him in the face. On top of letters and pictures sat a yellow rose, full and blooming they way it had been the day she gave it to him. Draco picked it up and stuck his nose in the center, inhaling deeply. It smelled like jasmine and vanilla, just like she did. All the memories from the past year played on the back of his eyelids. He saw her smiling face, her red hair whipping wildly in the wind, even the freckles across the bridge of her nose became something special when he remembered what she meant to him now.

They had been an unlikely pair, a Weasley and a Malfoy, but somehow it worked. Ginny always swore that when Harry returned this thing they had would be over. Now, as Draco set the rose aside and pulled out a picture, he realized how much it hurt to lose someone you loved. He could only imagine that she had felt a tenth of this ache when Harry had gone off in search of Voldemort during the summer. The only difference between her pain and his was that she knew her love would come back, while Draco knew his was gone forever.

He glanced at the picture, smiling as it moved before him. There he was throwing snowballs at Ginny as she laughed and ran away from him; her nose was as red as her hair, the rest of her covered in black cloth to keep the cold out. Draco didn't remember that day being more significant than any other, but just the reminder of what he would never do with her again was enough to bring the weight of the world on his shoulders.

Ginny had lost a brother in the war and he knew because of that defeating Voldemort would always be important to her. She had another brother with wolfish scars from Fenrir Greyback, something that had happened in her fifth year at Hogwarts. To Ginny, the war would always mean freedom from fear. She would no longer have to worry about a dark force picking her brothers off one-by-one. She would no longer have to worry about the Dark Lord possessing her. To Draco though, the war would always be a defeat. His family had fought for the wrong side and in the end, they realized that, but it was too late by then. The Malfoy name was now said with disdain. When he walked down the street people would sneer. He knew he would never be able to go swimming on wizarding beach without having to explain why he was one of the only death eaters not behind Azkaban bars. He had lost the pride of his family name, but even that didn't hurt the way losing Ginny had. What meant freedom to her would always mean imprisonment to him.

Casting the wintery picture aside, Draco picked up another. It was a candid shot, one that didn't move. Ginny was raging at him in the photo, her red hair askew and her broom hoisted above her head to hit him with. He chuckled to himself as he remembered when it was taken. Shortly after his godfather had revoked her Quidditch privileges Draco had caught her flying around the pitch just before dinner. She seemed so happy in the air that he had to capture it on film. Ginny must have seen the flash of his camera, because instantly she descended on him and began yelling. She was cute when she was furious, which he had told her on a number of occasions. As happy as they'd been in their own little way, they fought on a regular basis. More than once she'd hexed him for changing the subject to how beautiful she looked when she was angry or how cute her nose was when she scrunched it up just before she yelled at him. Draco remembered that she had hit him in the head with the broom just after the picture was taken, escorting him to the Hospital Wing when he passed out and staying by his bedside when Madame Pomfrey said he had a concussion.

There were more pictures in the box, as well as letters and a couple drawings she had bestowed upon him over the past few months. Draco thought about looking at them, about reliving the happiest time in his life, but he decided against it. He loved Ginny, despite adamantly telling her several times that what they had was a casual relationship. As good as it would feel to revel in the memories, it would hurt in the end. He had lost her forever without as much as a good bye. The sad thing was that he knew it was going to happen. They had talked about it in the beginning, discussing the pros and cons of being together. She made sure he knew that the moment Harry came back she would be gone and at the time he had merely shrugged and said it didn't matter, he wasn't interested in marrying her or even being with her for the long haul. He hadn't thought then about what he would feel for her now.

Draco set the box at his side, knowing he could never leave it here among the devastation. He would take it with him because in the end, no matter how many painful memories it would drudge up, he knew it would rip apart what was left of his soul if he left it behind. Ginny might no longer be in his life, but the box would be proof that she had existed in it in the first place and really, that was just enough for him to survive the feeling of his heart shattering before his very eyes.

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><p><strong>Author's Note<strong>: This idea came to me when I was scrolling through the new stories. Someone had said something about 'scattered memories' and from that phrase came the entire premise of this fic. There will be other chapters, ones based on the importance of the rose, letters and photographs in the box. This stays almost completely true to the series with the exception that Ginny's parents didn't pull her out of school. I hope you enjoyed this enough to favorite and review.


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